Mariah Morrell (b. 1993 Long Beach, CA) is an artist that works with pen on paper. While born in California she was raised and educated in New Mexico. In 2012, Mariah earned her high school diploma at Cottonwood Classical Preparatory school in Albuquerque NM, graduating with certificates in Fine Art through the International Baccalaureate Program. Mariah is currently earning her BFA at New Mexico State University with an emphasis in drawing. In 2015, Mariah exhibited her work in Mas Art, Las Cruces NM. Mariah creates highly rendered drawings using micron pen to achieve not only her image but a desired texture. Her work is about the obsessiveness of youth, demonstrating this though her excessive mark making.

Sydnie began studying photography at 20 years old and has been a practicing fashion and beauty photographer in southern New Mexico. She admires the sophistication in the work of photographers such as Txema Yeste and remains committed to maturing the editorial style of her own imagery. Sydnie has exhibited collage work and portraiture in various local galleries, dancing between the disciplines of fine art and editorial photography.

Artist Statements

Mariah's work is about the excess and exuberance of youth. Using excessive mark making to convey the subject of youth and exuberance. Specifically relating to the younger generations voice and how people transform over time and grow out (or sometimes not) of their lifestyles as a young person. Using my own photography as a blueprint for my drawings, I layer two photos together to create a double of the person in the portrait. Then I begin the process of drawing out the subjects by hand with various forms of precise mark making. This doubling of the person in the photograph is used to represent our struggle with separating ourselves from what we think is expected of us, and who we really are as individuals. My work strives to demonstrate identity, ecstasies, and excess of youthful life through both the forms and the mark making. ​

While creating works of art using the medium of pen on paper to explore the idea of order emerging from a disarray and confusion found in the medium. This disarray in the medium is a reflection of the confusion and disharmony found as a contemporary youth. The use of scribbles made with a permanent tool brings to mind an uneasiness and anxiety that will be contrasted with the collection of marks creating a clean and representational image. I create works of art that will find the viewer conflicted and interested at the same time. Conceptually looking at the mark making being loose and uncontrolled referencing a childlike innocent scribble. The combination of chaos in the mark making and the emotional indecision of youth, the medium and subject matter can function together cleanly.

Sydnie's work examines the potential of attributes within systems and software that fuse together portraiture, vibrant layers, zooming in and inspecting the subject matter. I want viewers invited in to share the space in which I reimagined my subjects through some of the most essential blending modes. I spent time in digitally intimate spaces studying the transition of gradients and texture, striving for perfection but then realizing the value in achieving balance. After capturing what often exceeds 400 images, I remain drawn to absorbing one single image up close and focused on integrating its features with a control variable. Through that control, each image still manages to break and take on its own interpretation of color, shadow and light. I find my practice almost forming into gameplay until I've completed all of the "levels".